There is a popular claim on the Internet that cow attacks are more likely to cause death in humans than shark attacks. We decided to check if this is true.

The media wrote about the danger posed by cows (for example, “Vesti.ru" And Lenta.ru), informational portals, resources with selections of entertaining facts. Users of social networks talk about this (Twitter, "VKontakte", Facebook*), YouTube and blogging platforms (“Zen", "Peekaboo"). This information can also be found on websites about animals.

"Verified" has already been debunked myth that sharks often attack people in order to eat them - in many ways, their bloodthirsty image is created by popular culture, for example, the Jaws film series, and is far from the real state of affairs. The fact that animals supposedly sense blood in the water many hundreds of meters away and, thanks to this, swim to attack, is also it turned out not true.

By information According to the Florida Museum of Natural History, which maintains an international database of shark attacks on humans, in 2022 there were only nine incidents in the world that ended in death, and only five of them were not provoked by the victims themselves. Over the previous ten years, the number of fatal shark attacks on humans varied from two (in 2019) to ten (in 2013 and 2020).

It would seem that cows are rather calm-looking herbivores; they do not have fangs or claws. However, due to their size and weight, they can cause very significant injuries to humans, especially when it comes to a herd. “Verified” was unable to find global statistics on cow attacks on people, but how often they occur can be judged from media reports. For example, in 2020, several similar incidents occurred in the UK. In June, an 82-year-old Briton and his wife attacked a herd of cows in Yorkshire - a man died, a woman escaped with bruises. In September in the same area and for the same reason died local school teacher. Soon a similar thing happened in Northumberland attack a herd of cows on a passerby - he also died from his injuries.

The Guardian newspaper citing the Health and Safety Executive reported, that from 2000 to 2020, cows killed 98 people in the UK alone. Department called for farmers should not leave animals with newborn calves in fields with public footpaths, as 70% of all attacks were related to protection cow to her cubs. And this is a threat not only to pedestrians who accidentally collide with cows, experts claimthat almost two thirds of fatal cattle attacks on farmers are carried out by cows during the calving period or in the first months of the calves' lives.

US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in 2009 published statistics on cow attacks in four states (Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska) from 2003 to 2008. Over a five-year period, in these regions alone, 21 people died due to attacks by cows or bulls; from two to six cases were recorded annually. Study, conducted in Sweden in 1989, showed that 16 people died in the country due to aggressive behavior of cattle from 1975 to 1984.

It is difficult to strictly compare the number of deaths from shark and cow attacks, since the data that “Verified” was able to find on the latter is very fragmentary. However, even from these scattered statistics it is clear that there are many deaths associated with cow attacks: if in only four US states in some years this number reached six deaths, it can be assumed that throughout the world it should be tens of times higher. Moreover, in the last decade, no more than ten people have become victims of sharks around the world.

*Russian authorities think the company Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.

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